Kuka Studios

Although this post deals primarily with Google Adwords the principle is the same for all PPC advertising whether it be Yahoo or even Facebook. We will address a few topics such as: why is good Adwords copy so important? What makes good ad copy? How this will affect your overall performance? Like all advertising your message is important. It is your first point of contact with your prospective audience and you want that first impression to count. Branding exposure and vanity aside, good copy is all about the CTR (click thru rate) more clicks generally means more potential customers.

So why is CTR so important?
This is twofold, as well as increased traffic to your site you will also be improving your Adword quality score (covered in another post). In short, the better your adword quality score, the less you pay and the higher you are listed, resulting in more clicks for the same budget. Please note that this article is about improving CTR and I am not saying that adverts with the highest CTR are the best. Your best ads are always those with the highest R.O.I. or in certain circumstances the highest volume generating with an acceptable R.O.I.

Your Adwords audience is one of the best converting groups, these people are coming to you rather than you having to approach them. The quality of leads are generally higher as they are not incentivised (e.g. affiliate) and they are an educated audience, knowing what to search for is half the battle won. These people know what they want and hopefully you are that person to provide this.

Good copy is not difficult to achieve - it can even be seen as formulaic: Headline, 2 lines of copy, destination URL and we will look at each in turn and give you tips on how to appeal to your audience.

The anatomy of an ad.
Headline (25 characters)
Line 1 (35 characters)
Line 2 (35 characters)
Display URL (35 characters)
Destination URL

Headline
Although all elements contribute to the overall optimisation, the headline is the most important. This is the first thing you read and generally the first thing you notice. It is at this stage that you decide whether the ad is relevant to you. So what does this tell us? Firstly, you must make your headline relevant and try to catch your searchers’ attention by using compelling headlines that also contain keywords.
The best tips I can provide are:
- Always include the keyword in the headline if you can. e.g. SEO Services Glasgow
- Use a question e.g. Interested in S.E.O.?
- Use an instruction e.g. Increase Conversion. Increase your Traffic
- Buy or not buy? All over the net you will see advice that you should not use “buy” in your headlines. This is not strictly true as with all things there is a time and place and the right thing for one situation isn’t always the best course of action for another. It is true that the word “buy” in a headline can be off-putting but if you are specifically selling something it can drive targeted traffic. Think about it in these terms, if someone is looking to buy something your ad will appeal to them, if they are only looking for information they will not click your ad and you will save money. You might not get a chance for your site to do a pre-sale but at least your advert is being direct and getting only the qualified traffic coming through. One of my favourite examples for this was an e-commerce company selling mobile I.T. equipment, the budget was constantly being sapped and we could see that we were getting high click through rates for our more generic terms but few conversions in relation. Now we did not want to drop our generic terms but we wanted to only drive traffic that was interested in buying so we stuck “buy” in the title. Our traffic did drop but so did our costs the important thing is that we did not drop in conversions. We removed the purely information seeker from our budget and focussed solely on qualified converting browsers.
- Use a price - this only works if you are competitively priced. Professional Web Design from £245
- Use title case e.g. Professional web design or Professional Web Design
- Do not repeat your company name in the headline as they should already be able to see it in your display url

Copy
- Be specific, always focus around your main objective. Be direct and make sure your message is clear. Generic ads under deliver when compared to targeted copy.
- Every character counts, do not waste vital space with bridging words or phrases. e.g. Online Marketing Glasgow not Online Marketing in Glasgow
- Use this space to tell a story, offer instructions, divulge information, make bold statements. e.g. Increase your online revenue by 35%
- Create trust e.g. UKs Largest supplier. Cisco certified. This must be proven or you will be banned. e.g. Award winning web design 2007-2009
- Adding elipses (i.e. …) at the end of your second line implies that you have more information to offer and encourages a greater click through. e.g. Professional web design, e-commerce, bespoke solutions…
- There are specific keywords which seem to gear people into action: free, download, how to, e.g. How to increase site conversion in 3 easy steps…
- Use strong call to actions - order now, limited offer. Today only. e.g. Web Design from £249. Limited Offer - Order Now!
- Add seasonality to your ad copy, but keep it updated or it will count against you. e.g. Summer Clearance! Order now to secure your place…
- add benefits and usps unique selling points: free next day delivery, why my product helps you.

Display URL
- Experiment with capitalisation e.g. KukaStudios.com
- Add keywords to your URL e.g. KukaStudios.com/WebDesign

In General
- Think like your audience (this is generally true for all marketing) what are they searching for, what do they want to find e.g. Local Web Designers
- Do not use repetitive keywords in your headline and copy, always try to differentiate. e.g. Professional web design, professional templates and solutions…. or Professional Web Design, Quality templates and solutions.
- Always check what your competition are doing and see what their USPs are and the tone of their delivery. e.g. Do they offer free delivery?
- What makes you different from your competition? What do you have to offer?
- Although this is often overlooked, correct spelling, punctuation and casing will make all the difference. Would you trust someone who can’t even spell an ad correctly with all your money and credit card details?
- Wording is also very important and you should always test this to see what performs better in terms of ROI e.g. Half Price Web Design or Web Design 50% Off.

Testing
- Test everything! Run multiple ads and measure their performance against each other in terms of CTR and Conversion. Take the best elements from each and create new ads until you have streamlined the “perfect” ad.
- Small changes make big differences - one word can make all the difference so can an exclamation mark - you should constantly experiment
- Mix up the placement of your keywords
- Always experiment with new copy and keep it fresh

There is another thing that I won’t go into right now, but is worth knowing about, and that is dynamic keyword insertion. This is where you can take the searched for term and have it dynamically inserted into your own copy. Although this sounds ideal and can be used to great effect there are also pitfalls with it if not thought through fully. Google’s full FAQ can be found here.

For more information on Google Adwords and the copywriting services that we offer, contact Kuka Studios.